Firms and council warned of power issues before Heathrow outage

Business groups in west London, including West London Business, had warned National Grid and Ofgem about power network stress and oversubscribed energy supply prior to a substation fire in Hayes that caused a power outage at Heathrow Airport. While National Grid stated the incident was unique and had operational substations, Andrew Dakers emphasized the ongoing fragility of the power supply in the area, calling for ministerial oversight and faster upgrades to address the lack of headroom in the network. Councillor Shantanu Rajawat highlighted the lack of infrastructure investment and capacity issues, with developers resorting to distant electricity sources, as inquiries continue into the fire and outage to improve future energy system resilience.

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